So how many of you knew I was a hell of a runner back in high school? Well, I was. Senior year, anyway. In the fall. And winter.
I first started running about 9 years ago, now that I think about it. That really makes me feel old. Anyhow, the school I was at during 7th grade always had this end of the season race for fun between the cross country team and family/friends of the team members. I wasn’t running that year (hadn’t gotten interested yet), but at the suggestion of my father and sister (who was running for that school), I decided to try this other race. It was a 3-mile course and I finished it in about 24 minutes. I call that damned good for never having run more than about a half mile at any one time before in my life. I just remember telling myself not to stop again and again the whole way – and I never did. And during that race I discovered something about myself that I hadn’t known before.
The next fall I ran cross country for Hampshire Regional High School in Westhampton, MA. Wasn’t much faster than I was that first race (usually ran in the 23s), but I started to really enjoy it and so I stuck with it.
By the next year I had moved from MA to Chesterland, OH, and was at a new high school. It was through cross country (and marching band) that I started to make new friends there. Still wasn’t all too fast, but by the end of the season got my times down into the high 21s for a 5k race. I was definitely starting to like it. I also started running track that spring, convinced I was best in the 800m and 1600m. 800 no, mile, sort of. By the end of the season I was mostly running the 1600m and 800m (my coach still thought I should try for it) and occasionally the 3200m.
Sophomore year showed improvement in both cross country and track. Got my times down into the 20s for the 5k in XC (I think 20:28 was my best for the season) and my times in the 1600m down to around 5:45. Not blazing fast or anything, but not bad.
Junior year is when I started to show more potential. In cross country I got my times down into the 19:40s and in track my 1600m times dropped into the low 5s, my best being 5:07 if I recall correctly. I was also running more consistently. My 800m and 3200m times also got better, but weren’t anything to get excited about, really (2:12 and 12:20 if I remember correctly). That spring I also ran a road race 5k in which I set a then personal best of 18:20 and managed to win my age group as well.
This really got me psyched for running. I could feel that what I had done was just the start of what I could do. And so all that next summer, I ran with my buddy Joe every single day. We probably put in well over 1,500 miles that summer, constantly pushing each other harder and harder. By the end of the summer he and I were doing 12-mile tempo runs, at the end of which (for the last 1000m or so) we were probably running at sub-5-minute 1600m (mile) pace. A tempo run, for those of who have chosen to not subject yourselves to the insanity of dedicated distance running, is a run usually of two miles or more during which the starting pace (after stretching) is the absolute slowest pace of the entire run. The idea is to keep upping the pace steadily throughout the run such that at the very end you’re going significantly faster than you were at the start. This isn’t an easy run with a sprint at the end. It’s one of the most effective distance-training tools a runner can use and it’s absolutely gruelling if you do it right. What’s more, the fitter and faster you are, the harder you can push yourself and the more you can make yourself hurt. Prowess through punishment, really.
Anyhow, Joe and I were doing our best to set ourselves up for a good cross country season in the fall. We worked our asses off, and in the end it paid off extremely well.
A side note on the scoring of cross-country before I get any farther. In a cross country team race, teams are scored by their first five runners. The numbers of the places of the first five runners from every team are added together for the team score. Lowest score wins. The lowest possible score for a team is 15, which only happens in a sweep, the 15 coming from the sum total of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
My senior cross country season was a very bittersweet time for me. Everything in my life ouside running more or less sucked. Girl problems, my grandfather died, etc. General badness. Running was a way for me to get rid of all the bad energy – it is a very cathartic thing for me. It was running that kept me going with this sort of insane intensity. By the end of the regular season we were more or less dominating with a record of something absurd like 85 wins to 12 losses. That is, of all the races we ran, only 12 teams of 97 ever ran better than us. I was running in the mid-to-low 18s for the 5k for the majority of the season, occupying 5th position on the varsity team. Anchor man.
Then came the conference meet. It was a cold, rainy day at the Perry municipal sporting grounds. We had always run better when it was cooler, and had always run well on this course. It’s a fairly fast course with a few long, low inclines and declines spread out fairly evenly over the trail, which wound through both wooded and open areas. We were going against arch rivals Chagrin Falls, with whom we were very evenly matched. In the end we won the conference meet, just barely edging out Chagrin Falls for the title. It was the first time that West Geauga (my alma mater) had one the conference title since 1967. 33 years. Booyah. I ran a personal best by about 15 seconds, finishing 5th for our team in 17:58, just barely behind Joe, who barely finished at all. About 150 yards out, Joe wasn’t too far ahead of me and was literally on the verge of passing out. I started screaming my fucking lungs out, “KEEP GOING JOE DON’T YOU STOP GO JOE GO GO GO!!!!!!!” and so on. He hit the finish line (collapsed just over it) only about three seconds ahead of me. I have it on video and every time I see those last few seconds of the race I can’t sit still.
The district championship came the following week on the same course. It was even colder and even wetter than at the conference meet. My asthma was finally getting under control and dammit we were ON. We won the district championship for the first time in school history and I ran 17:56, Even writing about it has my heart racing and my adrenaline pumping. A lot of people just assumed that Joe was done for the season after what happened at the conference meet. Not so, I’m happy to say. We won that thing going away. We fucking dominated. Joe ran great. Everybody ran their best The recollection of that moment when we first knew we had won is enough to get me going. It was to be the singular moment of my high school running career. It was an experience that nothing else will ever touch.
Sadly, the regional meet was where we got our asses handed to us. It was a hot, dry day on an unfamiliar course, we had stayed in a hotel the night before and not slept particularly well, the best teams from the region were there. I think we placed something like 12th overall. I passed my high school nemesis about half-way through the race. He usually occupied 2nd or 3rd slot on the team and that day I think came in 5th or 6th for us. I knew we were fucked from that point on, though I never stopped pushing myself as hard as I could go. In the end I ran an 18:26 and only my friend Jeremy (the famed “Joe Stink,” so named because of the odor he picked up from the 27 cats in his house) made it to the state competition.
After the end of the regional meet, everything just came down on me in one huge wave. All the frustration and grief of the death of my grandfather and all the bullshit I’d been going through with Courtney and now this kick in the junk at the regional meet. It all just came together. I wandered into a little wooded area to the side of the course, sat down, and just cried and cried. I probably cried for 45 minutes. After I had stopped and was still sitting on that log, my coach came over to me and talked to me for a little bit. I went back over to where the rest of the team was. We were very quiet for a little bit, but eventually the camraderie of the group and the happiness that Jeremy had made it to state came over and we started to smile again. Not big, but enough, knowing that we had made school history that season and taken part of something that most of us would never be able to top in subsequent experience.
I got two plaques at the awards ceremony at the end of the season. One was for being a captain of the boy’s team (I shared the position with Joe and Kevan). The other was the coach’s gold award, which I suppose I got for showing as much dedication, perseverence, and general contribution to the team as I did. Both of those plaques are hanging on the wall to my left.
The very next day was a sunday and after church I was still feeling very down, very frustrated. I went out to the polo fields in South Chagrin and knocked out 18 miles as fast as I could go. It was cool and wet and perfect. The beauty of the woods I ran through was wonderful. I nearly blacked out at the end, but it accomplished a couple things. First, it was a second and much-needed catharsis. I left a lot of bad emotion on those trails. And second, it fucking knocked something loose. In the following weeks I would top all my previous running achievements (personal records that still stand) as an individual.
Once the season was over, I could train the way I wanted to train. The way I needed to train. That means lots of distance and hard-ass tempo runs. Two weeks after the end of the season, Joe and I ran a 1-mile (1600m) time trial on the school track, coming in at my current personal best of 4:57. In heavy training shoes no less. I also ran a 2-mile time trial that week and tied an old personal best of something like 11:30. Would’ve gone faster, but some friends there watching me were pretty distracting and not exactly helpful. Oh well. A saturday or two later I ran in the Cleveland Clinic Jingle Bell Run, a 5k road race that was run at the Cleveland Zoo that year. I went over the start line in second place and finished in third overall, out of at least 150 people, having run a 16:46 5k. The conditions were perfect, the course was wonderful, and I got myself another plaque (though the time I got means a hell of a lot more than any piece of wood).
The following track season was to be a big disappointment. I wouldn’t finish the season, having developed a double stress fracture in my left tibia. A stress fracture comes from overtraining, something I did a lot of due to a track coach who had gotten greedy, having seen the speed his distance runners had exhibited in the cross country season. I did manage to bust out a 24-second 200m in practice one day, though, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.
So what’s the point of all of this? The point is that I’m a runner, dammit. I ran off-and-on during college, but mostly directed my attention to strength training. Manged to win the intramural cross country 5k my sophomore yearin a blazing 19:28. My weight went up from all the lifting from the 125 or so I weighed when running senior year to the 150 I weigh now. It’s all muscle and bone density, and I’m still pretty thin, but running is definitely harder with 25 extra pounds.
I miss running competitively. It seems like the time is right to try to get back into the running game and see what I’m capable of these days. Theoretically, this is about the time that I should be reaching my peak athletic potential, so if I can get going on things the way I used to do, I see no reason I can’t still set some personal bests.
Should be interesting.
